(For new readers: The Law Of Merited Impossibility is an epistemological construct governing the paradoxical way overclass opinion makers frame the discourse about the clash between religious liberty and gay civil rights. It is best summed up by the phrase, “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.”)

UPDATE: Just heard from a banker friend:

I just saw your blog on the “ally” invitation to employees at Chase. This has been happening at Bank of America for a year now. It’s true and the pressure is there for everyone to join as an “ally”.

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106 Responses to JPMorgan Chase Outing Wrongthinkers

@Apres Moi:How is this different form a Christian college forcing professors and other staff to sign a statement of faith?

Really? I’ll try to explain it for you.

A Christian college takes much of its identity from being Christian. Typically, such a college will want its faculty to exemplify that identity. In many (not all) Christian colleges, all faculty and staff are expected to be Christians. In some, employees are expected to be, not just Christians, but some particular denomination of Christian (e.g. Goshen College, where all staff are expected to be Mennonites). In some (e.g. Cedarville) even the students are required to subscribe to the school’s particular religious identity, and that’s a perfectly reasonable way of drawing the line. The EEOC has and should have no problem with this.

Planned Parenthood is pro-abortion-rights. That means that those opposed to abortion rights needn’t apply. They want their staff to exemplify their identity and purpose. They will want their volunteers to also exemplify their identity and purpose, by being pro-abortion-rights. The EEOC has and should have no problem with Planned Parenthood terminating an employee who has come to believe that abortion is a grave moral evil, because that’s not what they are about.

JP Morgan Chase is a financial services firm. Should it decide to fire a committed Marxist who believed that capital is an evil and must be destroyed, that would be consistent with its identity and purpose and I strongly doubt that the EEOC would have a problem.

It is *not* consistent with JPMC’s identity and purpose for it to pressure its employees to be actively affirming of any cultural norm — so long as it doesn’t conflict with investment banking.

Expanding a little on Dan Berger’s excellent exposition, there are two constitutional principles involved: freedom of expression and freedom of association. Government is barred from infringing either, just as government is authorized to regulate commerce.

A self-defined Christian college is a private exercise in freedom of association. That includes the freedom to freely associate with whom you choose, and to define the basis of your mutual association, excluding those who don’t measure up. That’s why the Republican Party doesn’t have to admit self-described Democrats (or Communists) as members.

A Christian college may be formed for, among other purposes, expressing Christian doctrine, or some specific set of Christian doctrine. That is protected freedom of expression.

A commercial business, including an incorporated commercial business, is not an exercise in free expression. It exists to make money. That is what it is chartered for. It may notinfringe the freedom of expression or association (outside of work) of its employees. The Christian college has a protected right to engage in freedom of association.

Totally different purposes, functions, and constitutional statuses. Its not about a one size fits all moral code. I note that a publicly financed college or university CANNOT be a Christian college. The state may not Establish a religion.

Many private colleges that, 50-60 years ago, required all students to attend services in the chapel, generally the services of the denomination that founded the school, no longer do so. They don’t have to. But there is no reason they cannot do so. There is reason that employers of employees cannot do so.

Dan Berger: “It is *not* consistent with JPMC’s identity and purpose for it to pressure its employees to be actively affirming of any cultural norm — so long as it doesn’t conflict with investment banking.”

To be clear, JPM’s purpose is to maximize shareholder value. Providing investment banking services is one way in which it does this. Other ways, albeit less significant, include creating a corporate image that is favorable and a corporate culture that management deems conducive to increased productivity. Apparently, JPM believes that identifying LGBT allies is consistent with a favorable corporate image and a corporate culture that increases productivity.

This may not be the way I would choose to burnish my corporate image and increase employee productivity, but I can’t ignore the possibility that JPM knows something about its image and workforce that I don’t and it thinks it’s acting in the interest of its shareholders in taking this step.

There is absolutely nothing new in a company taking actions that have no apparent and direct impact on the bottom line for the purpose of creating an image and culture that the company believes will ultimately improve the bottom line. The only thing new here is that the particular image and culture JPM is fostering is one in which LGBT allies are identified and (maybe) encouraged.

Irene has exposed herself as a running dog lackey of the bourgeoisie. Let the plutocrats trample on the civil liberties of their wage slaves, so long as the almighty profit margin is served.

That, admittedly a bit heavy on the rhetoric for effect, is precisely what is “wrong with that.” The company board of directors may take a position affirming that JPMC is “an ally of TLBG,” just as it may donate to support the Special Olymics or the Metropolitan Opera. It may not obligate its employees to do the same.

@Irene: “This may not be the way I would choose to burnish my corporate image and increase employee productivity, but I can’t ignore the possibility that JPM knows something about its image and workforce that I don’t and it thinks it’s acting in the interest of its shareholders in taking this step.”

Yes, it certainly does think it’s helping its shareholders, but probably not for the reason you suggest. It’s really a cringe response to pressure from the various government arms that enforce arbitrary Federal decrees that Americans never voted for and Congress never passed.

The Federal government is JPMC’s biggest customer by far. For example, JPMC has half the EBT (electronic benefits transfers) contracts in the country. The Feds saved JPMC back in 2009, and massive flows of cheap “too big to fail” loan money continue. Perhaps partially as a reward for being so punctiliously PC, the Feds recently let JPMC off with a 13 billion dollar fine for the misdeeds of the Bear Stearns units it acquired, a drop in the bucket compared with what the government has pumped into JPMC since 2008.

So JPMC knows very well what side of its bread is buttered. If the Feds, who make JPMC rich but can also make it miserable more or less at will, want gay-friendly, JPMC will give them gay-friendly. As long as angry, vengeful social radicals like Holder at Justice have the whip hand that won’t change, and the Orwellian freak show in US corporations will only grow more coercive and oppressive.

Yet another instance of the abuse of the quasi-authoritarian decrees, a.k.a. “executive orders” or “presidential findings”, increasingly used by Presidents’ to bypass or nullify the popular will, the Congress, and the Constitution.